Lecture XI

That is to say, the soul lives during the night in these sounds of the spheres and they are enkindled when the astral body becomes aware of itself. In the creative musician the perceptions of the night consciousness struggle through during the day consciousness and become memories—memories of astral experiences, or in particular, of the intellectual or mind soul. All that men know as the art of music is the expressions, imprints, of what is experienced unconsciously in the sphere harmonies, and to be musically gifted means nothing else than to have an astral body which is sensitive during the day condition to what whirs through it the whole night. To be unmusical means that the condition of the astral body does not allow of such memory arising. It is the instreaming of tones from a spiritual world which man experiences in the musical art. And since music creates in our physical world what can only be kindled in the astral, I therefore said that it brings man in connection with those beings who have the astral body as their lowest member. With these beings man lives in the night; he experiences their deeds in the sphere harmonies and in the life of day expresses them through his earthly music, so that in earthly music the sphere harmonies appear like a shadow image. And in as much as the element of these spiritual beings breaks into this earthly sphere, weaves and lives through our earthly sphere, they have the opportunity of plunging their astral bodies again into the ocean waves of music, and so a bridge is built between these beings and man through art. Here we see how at such a stage what we call the art of music arises.